CENSUS: Almost all Inland growth thanks to Latinos, Asians

Incoming freshman students are greeted by faculty and staff during the SOAR orientation at Cal State San Bernardino's Santos Manuel Student Union. The Census Bureau shows that in the past two years almost all Inland growth has been from Latinos and Asians coming to the area.

The Inland area would have virtually stopped growing between 2010 and 2011 if it hadnât been for the 76,000 additional Latino and Asian residents, newly released census data shows.

San Bernardino County continued a two-decade trend of losing white residents as its Hispanic population edged toward becoming the majority that experts have been predicting. Latinos comprised 49.9 percent of the countyâs residents in July 2011, up from 49.2 percent in April 2010, the Census Bureau found.

âItâs almost certainly a majority now,â said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute of California.

In the nearly 11 months it took the government to collect and analyze statistics, higher birth and lower death rates among Hispanics all but assured that San Bernardino County has a Latino population over 50 percent, he said.

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In Riverside County, Hispanics comprised 46.1 percent of residents in 2011.

The population estimates are based upon information such as birth, death and tax records. They are the first population updates since the April 2010 census.

The nation reached a milestone in 2011 when, for the first time, a majority of children 1 year and younger were non-white. The Inland area long ago passed that mark. Nearly 80 percent of children younger than 5 in the region are non-white.

The data is the most recent evidence of the dramatic, long-term shift in the Inland areaâs racial and ethnic make-up.

In 1990, about 26 percent of the regionâs residents were Latino and 62 percent were white, non-Hispanic. Today, about 36 percent of more than 4.3 million Inland residents are white. San Bernardino Countyâs white population fell by 6,500 between 2010 and 2011, to less than 33 percent of the total.

The Latino growth trend likely will continue for many years, said Johnson, co-author of a 2008 report called âThe Inland Empire in 2015.â

âThat means theyâre more likely to be forming families and having children,â Johnson said.

Immigration directly from foreign countries to the Inland area is lower than in the boom years of the early and mid-2000s, and increased border enforcement, lower birth rates in Mexico and other factors portend slowed immigration in coming years, he said.

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